Stochastic sampling w/deformers

[Mr_Nitro]

Hi there,

I thought I could give a little hint from my some of my old work experience with huge volumetric datasets,

maybe it's already implemented or has been discarded for other reasons, but I'll give it a shot...

Q: interacting more smoothly with huge voxels sets when using volume deformers(pose, lattices?)

A:

what about applying a per-pixel stochastic sampling of the volume underneath? (doesnt even need

to rebuild the surface, just display coarse voxels)

it would be real useful when interacting with deformers like Pose, Move..etc.. you can have very smooth

feedback and when you're done it will compute transformation to all the other voxels, also you will be

assured that the sampled voxels you see are actual real part of the set, not some approximation (in terms

of position etc). It can be a viewport mode (so you can set % of voxels displayd) or on demand per tool.

---

and as for more down to earth thing... Lattices(or even better cage) anyone?? please...

keep up the great work!

cheers

mrn

[digman]

This reply is not to take away from your feature request but you might not know about this feature below...

I think what you are asking for is already implemented though not in voxel mode but surface mode unless I misunderstood your statement.

Go into surface mode (click on the little cube under the vox tree tab for your layer) and then click on the little rectangle box with the black arrow above it. That will store the high volume object on your hard drive and leave a low volume proxy object for smooth transformations.

Now you are able to what you asked about.

"interacting more smoothly with huge voxels sets when using volume deformers(pose, lattices?)" or the move tool also

Once you are done with the transformtions, click on the on the return arrow and the high volume object will be restored from the hard drive with the transformations applied

Then press the enter key to turn your transformations to voxels (this prevents stretching in surface mode for further work in surface mode or return to voxel mode.)

Yes, a lattice cage would be nice indeed...

Edit:

I forgot to mention under the voxels menu is the proxy visualisation settings..

[Mr_Nitro]

Hi Digman,

thanks for your reply, well I was aware of that feature, but I was more talking about 'interactive' behaviour and in voxel mode.

But indeed downgrading volumes has a similar purpose, but modality and how it works is not what I intended in the original post...also for big models is a quite slow process...

One weird loophole arises if you click downgrade then switch back to voxel do some modifications , then

click back to the restore downgraded (either from voxel mode or surface) it will erase your voxel modifications, if it is intended for

surface only modifications then it should not permit you to switch to voxel while in downgraded mode.

As for lattices I saw many are asking for those, is there some news about them being considered?

Thanks

mrn

This reply is not to take away from your feature request but you might not know about this feature below...

I think what you are asking for is already implemented though not in voxel mode but surface mode unless I misunderstood your statement.

Go into surface mode (click on the little cube under the vox tree tab for your layer) and then click on the little rectangle box with the black arrow above it. That will store the high volume object on your hard drive and leave a low volume proxy object for smooth transformations.

Now you are able to what you asked about.

"interacting more smoothly with huge voxels sets when using volume deformers(pose, lattices?)" or the move tool also

Once you are done with the transformtions, click on the on the return arrow and the high volume object will be restored from the hard drive with the transformations applied

Then press the enter key to turn your transformations to voxels (this prevents stretching in surface mode for further work in surface mode or return to voxel mode.)

Yes, a lattice cage would be nice indeed...

Edit:

I forgot to mention under the voxels menu is the proxy visualisation settings..

[AbnRanger]

I like your idea, and Andrew will entertain any good ideas from the userbase. Much of the toolset is a result of this close interaction with the community...such as the "Cache to Disk" feature and Multi-Resolution. I e-mailed Andrew and made the case for "Cache-to-Disk", and he said he would consider it. As he was in the process of implementing the feature, he added some additional functionality...that is having a low res proxy in place. As it turns out, that gave him a platform for Multi-Resolution...something he had been wrestling with for a while.

Another case is the Auto-Retopo feature. Andrew was working on a method that was introduced at Siggraph 2009...many from the community here added the ideas of being able to lay down some guides where we want edgeloops to flow, and paint areas where we want greater polygonal density. I added that maybe using the "Strokes" tool to apply guides for the edgeloops would be easier for Andrew to implement. Sure enough, that was how it worked out.

So, the point is...if you really think you have a good idea, that can help everyone, shoot Andrew an e-mail (support@3d-coat.com), and explain it. If you can make any visual aids (in Photoshop), to help communicate the idea, then please do so. The 3DC UI actually was born from mockups and input from the community here. I think this willingness to respond to user input is one of the things that endears me to the program and makes it my favorite application. I don't think you'll find ANY application where your own input plays a bigger role in its development than 3D Coat.

With all of that said...your idea sounds like it could help speed up all the sculpting tools in Volume mode...which is always welcome. Granted, the Multi-Res functionality is a terrific solution to the slow downs one experiences in Volume mode, but not having to use it as much would be greatly appreciated too. Andrew is supposedly going to be working on optimizing CUDA for volume mode, so now would be a good time to forward such an idea.

I also would like to see a freeform deformation lattice added to the toolset. We don't want to overwhelm Andrew with too many requests at one time. But when he has the chance to look into it, I think one way to implement it without too much fuss, is to perhaps create a variation of the primitives tool (ffd), using the same gizmos/lattice options...and use a semi-transparent version of the primitive (that would normal be present) to essentially mark the boundaries of an object that will be deformed.

What I might do is perhaps make FFD Lattice capability an option from within the Pose tool. This way you could use the selection tools within the Pose tool to set your falloff. This could make the Pose tool in 3DC incredibly powerful.

[Grandmaster B]

There has been ideas for animation and cage deformations in voxel mode before, but i believe this is not possible without loss of details in the model. If every deformation corrupts you model a bit then why give features which makes it very easy and fast? Although i realy like the cage deformation idea i'm not sure if this is without problems for the users.